by thenewgreen
In 1999, Professor Baba Shiv (currently at Stanford) and his co-author Alex Fedorikhin did a simple experiment on 165 grad students.They asked half to memorize a seven-digit number and the other half to memorize a two-digit number. After completing the memorization task, participants were told the experiment was over, and then offered a snack choice of either chocolate cake or a fruit bowl.The participants who memorized the seven-digit number were nearly 50% more likely than the other group to choose cake over fruit.
Researchers were astonished by a pile of experiments that led to one bizarre conclusion:
Willpower and cognitive processing draw from the same pool of resources.